The welfare and safety of persons being transported in wheelchairs, three wheeled scooters, power bases and the like is of ever increasing concern and many jurisdictions have enacted stringent safety requirements for devices to secure the wheelchair into the transport vehicle and the occupant into the wheelchair. Numerous structures, most of which are reasonably effective, have been suggested in the prior art, but they frequently require the attachment of a plurality of straps or the like to one or more anchor points in the vehicle. After attachment the straps have to be tightened either by the wheelchair occupant or by an attendant. Frequently, the wheelchair occupant has neither the physical strength nor the manual dexterity to manipulate the necessary straps and the like. This means that the attendant, or vehicle driver must spend several minutes securing each wheelchair in his/her charge into the vehicle. There have been some attempts to provide self attachment devices in the past and attention is directed to U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,690,364 and 6,474,916 in which a locking mechanism is secured either beneath or to the rear of a wheelchair and releasably locked to a post similarly mounted, either under or behind the wheelchair, on the floor of the vehicle. While reasonably effective in certain circumstances, problems of automatic unlocking and twisting or rotation of the wheelchair about the vertical post still remain. Thus there is a need for an automatic wheelchair tie-down system that can, if desired, be operated automatically by the attendant from a central location, or that can be operated manually by either the wheelchair occupant or by the attendant.